Version 0.1 Out Now

Project Hermes - v0.1 Released!

Challenge complete! This was done in roughly 30 hours over the course of 4 weeks.

I was originally disappointed with the state of this project coming into the last week, especially considering I wasn't able to devote much time to it.

These last 5 hours on the project really helped find it some life. I added a win condition, some audio, and some other small touches. At a certain point, I decided it was best to polish off what I had rather than try to add more features, which I think was a good call.

My opinion on the success of this project turned around when I decided to playtest it... and I actually had fun. I realized that there are a lot of good components in this game, even though they all need a lot of work.

Going Forward

This project is far from done. There's a lot that needs to be redone:

• Probably how resources work
• Definitely enemy spawning
• Probably the way the player's units spawn (not immediate, but with a build time)
• Communicating the current game state

Communicating the game state is probably the biggest out of those. It's not entirely clear how different things work. Some minor UI changes could help with that, but there's a lot more to it. For example, there needs to be a way for the player to understand the benefits and risks of each route, because as it stands the routes seem identical, even though they aren't (the upper road, Alpha, is safer than the lower, Bravo).

I also want to add camera controls. Trying to get everything stuck into a single frame makes it difficult to play with interesting level designs. I do think that future releases may stick to WebGL for the time being, but I definitely think at some point I'll upgrade the assets, increase level size, and switch to an executable. The increased level size will also slow down the pace a little bit, which I think would be ideal. The current build is on the cusp of what can be done with WebGL already (albeit with very little work put into compression).

Ugh... that User Interface

As a UX designer, I'm ashamed of the UI here. I didn't put too much thought into it, and started just building it out. Every time I opened the project, I wanted to change it, but didn't have the time. I made some minor improvements so you could more easily read everything, but it still is very rough.

It will definitely change as some point. Here's a list of some of the stuff that will need to change:

• Your current resources should be more prominently displayed.
• There needs to be a clear communication on the effect that the target base's current resources has on the region control.
• The cost of all the units that you currently have selected.
• What do all those numbers mean??? 
  • And if you know what they mean, why is the total resources to the left of the cost and carried resources? That's not how we read!

There's so much more, but those are the key ones. That UI is rough.

Wasted Work

In the video I made during development on this game, I talked about work that I had to redo because the first time I did it, I did it poorly. I never mentioned that the work I had done was implementing Helicopters - something that is decidedly not in version 0.1. This was a decision I made in the last hour. I was testing the game and realized that helicopters weren't all the useful as the game stood, and figured that the best solution would be to simplify the game down and remove them for the time being.

There's a few more things I would need to add to make them actually useful, and that's pretty low on my list of priorities. So for now, I wasted over 25% of my time on this project on a feature that isn't even in the game. What good time management!

What's Next?

I'm not sure if I'll be able to pick this back up anytime soon, as I have other things going on in the near future, but I hope to. I know there's a lot that can be done, and the work that is there I'm very happy with. I might try another 2-week/20-hour sprint to get 0.2 out there, but it'll have to wait until at least May.

In the meantime, subscribe to me on YouTube and follow me on Twitter!